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March 14, 2014

Chicken Fried Steak with Milk Gravy

My husband's mother has deep roots in West Texas, and he loves Texas style food. He enjoys that stick to your ribs and stomach
filling quality. While his mom did not
prepare those kinds of food for him as she had had enough fried foods as a child and teenager,
preferring a simpler dinner of tacos and chili. She says she thought there was only milk gravy until she married and learned otherwise.

My husband’s grandmother, Tommie's method of cooking was to fry. Tommie grew up on a ranch in West Texas watching
her mother and grandmother cooking on wood fired stoves. My mother-in-law remembers her grandmother
getting up every morning and starting the fire and making biscuits and gravy
without fail. They would eat a large breakfast
and Grandpa would take biscuits wrapped in a handkerchief with him for lunch while he
was out working on the ranch.

My
husband received from his grandmother a cast iron pan with this recipe for milk
gravy taped inside for Christmas one year.
It is a real treasure to have her handwritten recipe, and the square
cast iron pan is my favorite to bake biscuits in.

Great-grandfather, Tommie, mother-in-law at the ranch house where daily biscuits and gravy were made.

Chicken Fried Steak with Milk Gravy

4 cube
steaks

¾ cup
flour

¾ cup
panko or white bread crumbs dried or fresh

Dash of
cayenne if desired

1
teaspoon salt

1
teaspoon pepper

1 egg

½ cup
milk

Additional
½ cup plus more, if needed, for dredging meat

Oil for
frying.

In a
shallow dish or a plastic bag, mix flour, panko or bread crumbs, cayenne, salt
and pepper.

Coat
cube steak with the flour and panko mixture, making sure it is covered well.

Repeat
with all the steaks, adding more flour as needed.

Heat a
large heavy duty skillet over medium high heat and add ¼ to ½ cup oil. Heat to very hot. Fry each cube steak until golden brown of
each side over a high heat (if you fry with lower heat, the meat and coating
becomes very greasy).

Remove
the cube steaks carefully with a thin metal spatula so not to tear off the
coating.

Transfer
to a sheet pan and place in a 300 degree Fahrenheit oven until the gravy is
done.

Milk Gravy

2 cups
of milk

2 ½ tablespoons
of oil

2
heaping tablespoons of flour

Salt and
pepper to taste

After
the meat is done, drain off excess oil leaving 2 ½ tablespoons of oil.

Heat
pan over medium heat, and add flour and mix together with the oil forming a
roux.

Brown
roux stirring up brown bits as you stir.

Slowly
whisk in milk stirring constantly while mixture thickens.

Bring
to a boil and boil gently for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add
more milk if too thick.

Remove
from heat.

The
milk gravy thickens as it stands. Whisk in more milk over medium heat until the
desired consistency is reached.

2 comments:

Now, this is a great story to go along with your chicken fried steak dish. Plus, I like the old pictures of "ranch life". I have to say I have only made this dish once, but Mark enjoys this dish immensely. Bon

Thanks, it is not a dish I make weekly but I make it every few months. I enjoyed the story as well. It is hard to imagine that living rustic was not too too long ago and by necessity rather than choice (I am referring to the resurgence in home canning, chicken raising, butchering, hunting subsistence vs. trophy, gardening, etc.). Working that hard required food such as this!